1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information processing apparatus, an information processing method and an information processing program. More particularly, the present invention relates to an information processing apparatus allowing the user to more easily enter information on a preference with the user to the apparatus in a process to register the information in the apparatus, an information processing method adopted by the apparatus and an information processing program implementing the method.
2. Description of the Related Art
In general, when the user wants to search the Internet or the like for information desired by the user itself for example, the user enters a plurality of keywords each having a strong correlation with the desired information to an information processing apparatus and the apparatus then carries out a search process based on the keywords.
In addition, in recent years, there have been proposed techniques of searching for desired information without entering a keyword. In accordance with an information searching technique described in Japanese Patent Laid-open No. 2005-215922 (referred to as Patent Document 1 hereinafter), instead of entering a keyword, the user enters (or specifies) a picture taken by making use of a photographing function of a hand phone set. In this way, an operation to enter a keyword to the information processing apparatus can be eliminated. As another example, when the user wants to search for information on a specific shoe but the user does not know information related to the shoe, the user may not enter characters composing a keyword for the shoe. Examples of the information related to the shoe are the name of the shoe and the name of a manufacturer producing the shoe. In this case, the user can take a picture of the shoe by making use of a photographing function of a hand phone set and enter the picture to the information processing apparatus in place of the information related to the shoe. In this way, a process can be carried out to search for information on the shoe on the basis of the picture of the shoe.
An operation to enter characters and/or numbers to an information processing apparatus is carried out in a process to register information on a preference with the user in the information processing apparatus. For example, information on a preference with the user can also be registered in a recording/reproduction apparatus for recording and reproducing a TV broadcast program. That is to say, the recording/reproduction apparatus having a function for registering information on a preference with the user records a TV broadcast program on the basis of information registered in advance by the user in the apparatus by entering typically a keyword to the apparatus as information on a TV broadcast program serving as a preference with the user.